There is a need in the Cosmetics and Personal Care market for plastic fragrance bottles. Globally, the fragrance container market stands at 1.2 billion units. Plastic containers are safer than glass, more durable in transit and lighter in weight. Also, plastic containers are less expensive to color or decorate than glass and offer greater design freedom than glass. However, polymers have been used only in a few specific fragrance containers or in areas, such as caps and nozzles, which are either opaque or not exposed directly to the perfume. Because many polymers, such as copolyesters, are amorphous in nature, they are degraded by the various carriers and essential oils found in fragrances resulting in plasticization, stress cracking, spotting or hazing. Thus, it is of interest to develop a coating for molded bottles which would protect the plastic surface from these chemicals. Premium perfumes generally consist of a combination of up to 33 weight % of various essential oils and fragrances in ethanol. There exists a need for coatings that produces a protective finish for a thermoplastic substrate exposed to fragrances or other material with similar volatile components.
Plastic sheets and films are well adapted to curing surface coatings using UV light where ambient temperatures and rapid reaction kinetics allow for low color coatings without distortion of the plastic. Conversely, the irregular shapes and narrow mouth openings of fragrance containers present a substantial challenge to coating the inside surface due in part to the difficulty of curing through the plastic. There exists a need for, and the present invention provides, a variety of formulated curing options to enable crosslinking of acrylates by indirect exposure to UV light, optionally in combination with thermal treatment.